When I look at John McCain, I think he looks like he is stuffed. I know, I know--that is not a very nice thing to say about a person, especially an older person, but I can't help it. He looks like he has been stuffed in expensive suits and shoes, and a ventriloquist is telegraphing his words. People are saying he did well at the Saddleback Forum, but, with all due respect to his injuries as a POW, he looked and sounded like the dummy making all the right moves and saying all the pandering statements as someone else pulls the strings and mouths the words. Here is an example: If you saw the forum, perhaps what I am about to describe struck you as insincere as it did me. Some media, especially bloggers have begun to comment and question the veracity of the following story, and I'm glad that I am not alone in my initial response to hearing it. I gave a little 'huh' when I listened to his recollection about when he was a POW, a guard wordlessly communicated with him by drawing a cross on the ground on Christmas Day, and it symbolized a form of worship between two Christians. It just seemed too much like a Hallmark moment. Then, I am reminded that it is very similar to a story Solzhenitsyn wrote in
The Gulag Archipelago.
Read more about it in Mark Nickolas's piece on the topic on Huffington Post. No one can say for sure that this event did not take place, but his decision to tell it in a setting with Christian evangelicals makes me wonder if he isn't just
lying pandering to get a few more votes.?.?.